Hi Graham!
Nice shot. So these are European spiders then, we have them in the UK, or at least it looks the same to me!
I am not a zoologist but an interested amateur.
I suppose that this fellow is an
araneus diadematus, aka. European garden cross spider.
The images of the English Wikipedia are not so good as in the German section so I link the latter
here.
The German article also says more about the habitat of it and that it can be found in whole Central Europe.
I love spiders (they eat flies you know) but ...
I hate spider web on my face!
Same here. With one expectation:
Pholcus phalangioides , seems that
PCM-madison had made a good pic of them above.
AFAIK they are an intrusive species from Asia although the linked article tells something different.
But I haven't recognized them 5 or 10 years ago here in Germany. Hope they haven't made their way across the Channel yet.
They seem to cut out other spiders, esp. in our houses. Their webs are no beautiful orbs or tubes but only pure chaos (to me).
And they and their webs are everywhere in my house.
I really don't have problems with spiders in my house except for those
Pholcus phalangioides webs
.
That reminds me of a former girlfriend of mine. She had a severe form of arachnophobia.
I could keep her from killing spiders. But when I put them out of the house, I always had to wash my hands thoroughly